progress..

View from the Kitchen to the front door...

View from the front door to the kitchen

"green" building

Throughout the work we continue to find that the lumber in our house is actually considerably older than the house itself. several studs here actualy have old mortise joints from their previous lives. Romantically we can say this is early environmental consciensnes and re-use... or just a cheap builder reusing what he had on hand.



our growing collection of "vintage wood"

progress...

St. Patrick's day

Alli bought a traditional St. Patricks day Pinata... asuming the weather would hold and the party would be outside...

it was 8 degrees so we stayed in


watch as alcohol + Alli and Jonathan Foote = Bad idea.

Gyp Bd

Drywall is going up. Big thanks to John, Steven, and Andrea for the help.

Los Lobos

Victor and Isidora Lobos stopped by from chile...

Allison = Plumber?

The most stressful act so far was the removal of an extra radiator pipe in our ceiling, this pipe cut across the ceiling and into the space now occupied by the new top stair tread and riser - it has been capped and abandoned by previous owners but was still connected to the main radiator supply. The yellow tarp was our [weak] attempt to plan for a worst case exploding water pipe...



(click pictures to enlarge) the short 3" capped pipe up in the ceiling joist replaces the 13' pipe seen dangling below.

Following the simple steps to drain the boiler and radiators before-hand meant that this potentially messy job took only 5 minutes and spilled no water.

Insulation, shims

The picture is rather poor, but we've now got insulation in the party wall, as well as a plumb party wall. The 20' tall studs varied as much as 3/4" - all of which are now shimmed out to give a level surface for the drywall.

Sound Proofing

The search for better sound proofing has turned up a bunch of products (The home theater geeks have spawned a slew of new products to make drywall quieter) - the best finds so far can be found in the links ------>

Stair in a weekend

The old stair, has been replaced, with a new stair- going the opposite direction. We found the old stair was 1 5/16" out of level across the treads across only 30 inches.


new stringers being test fit against the old stair (still in place)



old stair coming out...

the new stair, note the stringers are made of "Pressure Treated" 2x12's. This is because they are made from Southern Yellow Pine - much stronger and stiffer than SPF or Hem Fir the two varieties typically found at the local lumber supply around here for dimensional lumber. I have since learned that we can easily find Southern Yellow Pine (in this area) but typically only pressure treated.

Thanks Leo

A few pictures from Leo of just how nasty removing plaster can be. big thanks to the demo crew John, Steven and Leo.

progress cont...

insulation and vapor barriers are in on some walls. huge ammounts of expanding foam have been used to keep the wind from blowing through our sills.



our solution to removing the load bearing center wall down stairs? turn the wall above it into a truss and bear down at the two party walls. This solution came to us after realizing that the beam we'd sized to take the load was too long to get through the house and up the narrow stairs.

Real Progress

new wiring - a total of 8 new runs through the house. Currently a blow dryer and a cell phone charger will max out our energy use.

Body count keeps rising

Evidence that our house sits on an "ancient indian burial ground". This came out of the floor, there were others.

Merry Christmas

Work has stopped for the next week or so. Time to clean the house. Time to clean the dog.

termites...

were confined to one board that has been removed and replaced. This wall is shared with our neighbors, so replacement had to be done carefully so as not to disturb their wall finish.

19th century framing cont'd

The radiator pipe running along the floor is actually carrying a significant amount of the the roof load...

19th Century Framing

A few pictures of the curious framing we've encountered.
studs too short? not a problem:





Termites?

Turkish and the Wall

While at home Turk spends 90% of his time watching this opening in the party wall... It's not because he wants to help, but rather he's found something that lives just under the floor.

as 'merican as can be

We now own a truck... the civic wasn't getting it done. Between the 2000 lbs of house- insides we have been throwing away every week and the prospect of someday replacing said insides it seemed a natural choice. It's a Mazda B3000, you've probably heard of it before, it's kind of a big deal. Actually we'd never heard of it before, i didn't know mazda made trucks. Actually neither did they, it's a ford Ranger with Mazda logos.... literally, the bed liner says Ford.